


shadow players

by lady_peony



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Exorcist Politics, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 03:25:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15185711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_peony/pseuds/lady_peony
Summary: Some words are more terrible than spells. Or: exorcist gossip.





	shadow players

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [ Natsume Week, Day 6: Exorcists](https://natsumeweek.tumblr.com/about).

Muffled sounds drift out behind shifting paper, sleeves rising and dropping with swift gestures. Like battlefield banners, in a bright array.

"Come, come. It isn't as bad as all that. Let the young enjoy their youth, and leave the rest to those who know their business, wouldn't you say Tsuji-san?" This is said with a dismissive wave of a hand. The face is solidly carved, displays an arrogant patience with the other. 

"And who will carry all this—" another wave from another hand, a quicker motion—"years down the line? You would trust it to a foundation built on nothing but old horse bones?" Tsuji's family had owned a kimono shop once. Bolts of silk and woven cotton, catching light between floating cranes, gold-veined leaves. It had been sold off, all of it, just after he reached his thirteenth year. 

Daijiro's smile grows, his geniality now outweighing his arrogance. He claps a hand to Tsuji's shoulder. "If you're that worried, then by all means, take on a student or take a wife—there are always a few second sons or sighted daughters around, even in these times."

Tsuji shrugs, his eyebrows lifting slightly. His wears his old age more lightly than Daijiro does; a slow fade into frost and fraying parchment. 

"And is there anyone you would suggest, from such exemplary company?"

"Of course. Like, that one—ah, what was his name?" Daijiro shoves his mask farther to the right, squints. "That one, who had just come in." 

Tsuji turns too. "Natori-san, you mean? He's not as ignorant as some."

Their subject stands by the northern side of the room, smiles beatifically at the woman who approaches him, her shiki behind her. 

"Why not him?" Daijiro frowns a little. "I don't recall seeing him around much, this last year."

"I can't speak as to the others. For Natori-san, well. He has a good enough grasp of the work and the lore. It would be a surprise that no one has spoken to him before. He's been away for some time now, so I heard." 

"He quit?" Daijiro's eyebrows go up, this time. He wouldn't blame Natori for it. Not after what he remembers one summer evening, when his elder brother had returned nearly half-drowned, a deep gash running from shoulder to hip. It's a scar, now, but he still gets jumpy near large pools of water. 

Tsuji just hmms in reply. "I don't believe so. Not if he still wishes to show his face, here."

(Later,

Nanase had heard from Toya who heard from Morimoto who heard from Tsuji: Natori Shuuichi had returned to town. )

Whispers may not a reputation make, that is true. 

But listen. It sure doesn't hurt. 

 

—

 

"No family to speak of. Who will speak for his skill, then?"

Hey. This is not entirely true. There are his father's brothers. Aunt Kayami in Toyama, his mother's favorite sibling, who always had sent him new year's greetings without fail each year. Cousins. Ones who, outside of the rare wedding or funeral, Natori did not see at all. 

Natori straightens, steps away from the door. 

Which response irks him less, he wonders, the skepticism or the pity. When he opens his mouth, hands over a card— he's careful with those, wouldn't want his movie-star image mixed up with his after-hours activities—those are one of the two exchanges he expects.

_That_ Natori-san? From that family? 

What a shame, what a shame how quickly their house had crumbled, and no one to lead him through the shortest paths, the known ways, as his clan should have done.

That Natori-san? 

Followed by cut-off laughter, just lurking under their words.

He's fine. It's fine. He can speak for himself, after all. 

He has the assignment, no matter the muttering they would do behind his back, and if they had refused his offer, there were other leads he could have answered. 

Another outpouring of murmurs now, near the main entrance.

The crowd actually shifts away, from whoever has entered, the way water parts for a stone. It's not deferential, their manner. 

"The poor woman—"

"What else could Sumire-san have expected, with an outsider?" 

Sumire has a cool, placid look in her eyes as she moves into the room. A tall woman getting on in her years, close to early middle-age. Her hair is a still-dark chestnut, drawn up in a bun, and she has one hand clasped around what looks like a small iron baton at her side.

Shuuichi skims a quick look around crowd. Would their host today consider it rude to carry such weapons with them, in everyone's view? He doesn't remember if he had checked. Though as far as precautions go, it's not always as effective with these circles.

"So she did show," a voice hisses, next to Shuuichi. It's masked, a vague oval of rust-red. Shuuichi's head doesn't turn quite far enough to make out all the details. "They say her husband and her son have been in the city for months, now, without another word from them."

"Ah," Shuuichi says, "is that so?" A stab of something like sympathy, in his stomach. 

It always happens to some of them, most of them. They make bonds. Then they break, like reedy stalks in autumn. 

The murmurs around them aren't as malicious in tenor as they sometimes are. Still, when you know all words and eyes around you are turned to you, it can be disconcerting. 

A shiki separates itself from the crowd, hovers before Sumire. "Lady Sumire," it says, crooning, pitch as wavering as a flute, "allow us to express our sympathies for your current circumstances. If you could kindly spare an hour of your presence, won't you come to tea with us?" 

Sumire's gaze is like that of a hawk on a high branch, patient and pointed in its intensity. "Tell your master this," she says. "If he would express his sympathies—" her lips stamp the syllables with an ironic shade— "he can very well show his face to speak to me himself."

"Of course, Hirota-san never knew when to give up," a different voice from Natori's right side echoes, not quite loud enough that Sumire-san would notice.

What beasts we are, Shuuichi thinks, all of us. Thinks of fangs tearing through veins and meat, bones cracked to expose the cartilage. A crash of drawers upturning into a garden, the clatter of doors flung aside and locks picked open, strangers' feet and fingers scouring through the pickings of an old manor, snapping at each other if they came across another's face. 

 

— 

 

"Do you hate Matoba?"

He startles at the question. It's like the sudden brush of pine needles over skin, pinpricks of surprise. 

" _Hiiragi_." Urihime's usual frown has more ferocity in it than usual. 

"Why do you ask, Hiiragi?" He runs a thumb over the edge of an envelope in his pocket, the same one he had opened three days ago. Her question sounds like an old joke, one you heard so long ago that you had forgotten the punchline.

Hiiragi is behind him, but if he turned around, he imagines she would be staring at him with an air of grave consideration, even with her mask on.

"You replied to one meeting invitation," she says, slowly. "But not to Matoba's." 

That was right. He didn't open most of his mail without his shiki nearby, preferring to wait instead until they could all gather in his supply room to open everything at once, with defensive circles drawn and ready. A little bit of paper could be a dangerous thing.

And sometimes, an invitation was really just an invitation.

"That doesn't have anything to do with this." He wonders how to best explain it. Urihime had been a shiki with another for a long time before Natori had drawn up and sealed her contract. Hiiragi, unlike her, had been bound to an old shed, unable to leave its circumference for more than a decade. Of course, Hiiragi might not know. 

"I'm surveying the terrain, in a way. If a new clan is appearing, it's only polite to offer my greetings to them." The new clan was not large, he had heard, more of an affair of two minor clans joining. One from a family of merchants, the other from a line of well-known local pottery makers and painters. He wonders what kind of gathering they would throw, expects that it would veer more to extravagance than simplicity. "Matoba, on the other hand, is a known quantity."

He turns his head to check the path behind him. 

Hiiragi nods once. "I see." 

If she had noticed the slight ellipsis in his answer, she didn't seem curious enough to want to pursue it.

He hadn't said anything untrue. These connections were important. Thin, fragile as fishbones they might be. But they couldn't be ignored or avoided, any more than sailors would ignore the swell of waves beneath their ship. 

Some threads did snap, would snap, eventually. Jealousy over family secrets, over deserved or undeserved fame, on the rising and falling stars in their circles, whom to follow and whom to forget. Or they would feel pressed in by too much fear and too little certainty, in this work.

The exorcists who lasted had a certain sense of sangfroid, a steady will when faced with the monsters who threatened both body and mind. 

It would take time before they could see if this new clan was made of the same stuff.  
_Stage directions, enter right._ He sees the house come into view.

 

— 

 

So his days go like this. He studies his scripts in morning. Spells in the afternoon. And in evenings, he drinks a little, mingles more, and listens. 

Each syllable in an invocation matters. Each scrap picked up in between social niceties and honeyed flattery does too. 

Pay attention.

**Author's Note:**

> exorcists really are just the mean girls of natsume yuujinchou: the fic.


End file.
